


A Confession to Remember

by AmberWarrior



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Office, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Imagine your OTP as sworn enemies in a workplace, M/M, Prank Wars, Pranks and Practical Jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:49:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27209896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmberWarrior/pseuds/AmberWarrior
Summary: Imagine Eren, in the midst of releasing his bottled-up rage, getting caught up between saying “you wanna fight” and “fuck you”, and accidentally screaming “YOU WANNA FUCK” to Levi. In the presence of a dozen coworkers.It started with a prank war.
Relationships: Levi/Eren Yeager
Comments: 29
Kudos: 251





	A Confession to Remember

See, Eren and Levi hadn’t always been sworn enemies that wished for the other’s slow and painful death.

They had been decent colleagues, or even friends, until that night at the networking party where Eren threw up on Levi.

It technically wasn’t his fault. He’d been feeling queasy ever since he’d skulled a carton of expired milk just to prove to that horse-face Jean that ‘best before’ dates were a scam. And he swore he would’ve been totally fine, if it weren’t for the unexpected sight of Levi with slicked back hair and a custom-fit tuxedo that made his stomach twist and turn until he was _actually_ sick on Levi’s shoes.

Levi, sweet Levi, had the decency of taking Eren to the bathroom and sanitising the fuck out of their clothes (“It’s ok Levi, the milk’s kinda white so you can’t really see the stain- OW.”) before promptly kicking Eren in the shin because the sheer audacity of this man. There had been a potted plant right there. Right in front of Eren’s stupidly tall vision and yet his shoes had become the toilet bowl. Eren was like a dog that chose to use the couch instead of the pee pad.

“Just because you look like a dog it doesn’t mean you have to act like one.” Levi muttered irritably.

In his defence, he hadn’t meant it in _that_ much of a degrading way. Dogs were on the few and rare list of animals that he didn’t completely detest. Eren’s bright, apologetic green eyes, softened by his fluffy mop of caramel hair, made it impossible to be vindictively angry around him.

But Eren had snapped a string of curses in response, storming out of the party with his ears almost visibly steaming.

Then the next morning, Levi had stared incredulously at the dozens and dozens of misshapen, hazardously drawn canines spattered all over his post-its, notebooks and binders. He heard a snicker after he’d been rubbing furiously at his papers for 20 minutes and fought the urge to throw a calculator in the direction of Eren’s poorly-contained amusement.

And the game was on.

* * *

“My keyboard isn’t working.”

Mikasa hummed, “Try hitting it harder.”

Loud clacks and repeated banging followed her instructions.

“Harder.”

“Mikasa no, he’ll break it!”

“He can make it work if he tries, Armin. I believe in him.”

“Hey, my mouse isn’t working either what the hell?”

“Did you try turning it on and off again?”

“What do you mean? It’s directly connected to the…um…it goes here and…”

Eren slid underneath the back of his desk following the mess of tangled cords. Squinting in the shadows, he could barely make anything out. There was dust all over his fingers now and probably in his hair and ew, this was exactly the reason why he never messed with his plugs.

“Eren, what are you doing?”

Eren’s back immediately straightened at the sound of his boss’ voice, smacking his head into the table. Ow.

“I’m, uh, just,” he wiggled back out of his cubicle, rubbing the back of his hair and finding it weirdly difficult to meet Erwin’s eyes. “Just checking on the wires.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Not anymore.”

Erwin raised a brow. “I believe Levi checked them earlier today. If this an ongoing problem you should give a call to tech support. It’s probably not your fault.”

“Oh, really? That’s kind of him.” Eren gave a saccharine smile to Levi, who saluted from his desk in the corner. “I’ll make sure to thank him for going out of his way.”

“Amazing.”

Once Erwin was gone, Eren made a point of flipping his finger which, annoyingly, didn’t get rid of the cocky smirk on Levi’s face.

* * *

“You’re a fucking asshole, Eren.”

“Thank you…?”

“I mean it.”

“What did I do?”

“You know what you did.”

“Yeah kinda, but I wanna hear you say it.”

“If you smother your oily, sweaty motherfucking fingers all over my computer screen one more time you’re gonna have Purell shoved so far up your ass that even the 0.01% of germs will be eliminated.”

“Out of everything you could’ve shoved up my ass, it’s Purell?”

“What the fuck did you want up your ass?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s what I thought.”

* * *

“I know you took my stapler again.”

“What-” _Click!_ “Makes-” _Click!_ “You-” _Click!_ “Think-” _Click!_ “That?” _Click!_

“Agh using up my staples that’s foul play!” Eren snatched it back, his hands brushing against Levi’s. “Can’t you be a little more creative?”

“Why should I when nothing makes you angrier than stealing the little necessities?”

“That’s not true. Also, I hate you.”

“Your stapler sucks.”

* * *

“Airhorn on the chair? Really, Eren?”

“Don’t act as if you weren’t so startled that you jumped onto your desk like cat that accidentally dipped his feet into water.”

“You scared literally every single person on this floor. Heart attacks. Heart attacks everywhere.”

“If I made your heart beat faster you can just say so.”

* * *

“You just couldn’t resist, huh?”

“What?”

“My desktop picture.”

“Oh. Heh.”

“Annie laughed but Armin went green when he saw the skinless giant dude eating some woman as my background wallpaper. Not funny, dude.”

“It’s a fucking hilarious fatality. This is the sorta movie I’d be down to act in.”

“Tell that to Erwin when I complain to HR.”

“I _am_ HR.”

* * *

“Brat you stole my parking spot.”

“It doesn’t have ‘Levi’ printed on it so it’s technically not yours.”

"I had to park a block away from here, you turd. How the hell did you even do it? You don’t own a car.”

“I might not, but I do owe Annie a massive favour.”

“Was it really worth it?”

“Always.”

* * *

Mikasa swirled around on her chair, looking Eren dead in the eye. “Just ask him.”

“But he’ll think it’s stupid.”

“Eren if you keep overanalysing this whole thing out loud while I’m doing my annual reports then I might start to think it’s stupid too. Don’t get me wrong though, it was cute at the beginning.”

“But-”

“Armin help me out.”

Pausing from his steady typing, the blonde frowned sympathetically. “You’ll be ok, Eren. It’s really not a big deal to ask something like that. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“He thinks I’m childish.”

“He won’t,” Mikasa reassured firmly. “You’re a capable worker and a reliable friend.”

With their supporting words in mind, Eren found himself standing in front of Levi’s desk.

“Hey.”

Levi leaned back on his padded chair, adjusted the new name plague on his table that read “fucker in charge of you fucking fucks” and crossed his legs. Those pants were new. Ankle-cut.

“My eyes are up here.”

“I know.”

“…Alright then. What do you want?”

“That thing.”

“The thing that you’re pointing to? My titan stress ball?”

“No, next to it.”

“The pie? I’m almost done with it.”

“Is it yours?”

“Nope.”

“But you ate it anyway.”

“Yep.”

“Did you know it was mine?”

“Funnily enough, I did.”

Eren’s shoulder slumped and for a moment, Levi actually started to feel bad.

“So you knew it was mine,” Eren mumbled. “That was a limited edition sweet potato pie from the Sina dessert bar made by that famous chef Sasha Blouse who won the potato peeling contest back in 2013. They said that if you ate it you’d feel as if you had enough energy to run 5 laps around the world. I woke up early to wait in line for an hour and I even got to see Sasha in the kitchen rolling out the dough with a steamed potato in her mouth and it was so inspirational to see her so engrossed in doing something that she loved so much whilst also eating the food she loved the most. I was looking forward to trying out that pie all month.”

“Oh.”

The next few minutes consisted of Eren staring mournfully at the half-eaten pie that was silently begging to be slick with Eren’s saliva and entangled with his tongue in a passionate dance of flavour. He could imagine his teeth sinking into the remaining crust as it crumbled into his mouth in an avalanche of buttery bliss.

“Here.” Levi offered his plate with a sigh. “It’s not much but I hope you get to enjoy it.”

“You’re giving it to me like it was yours to begin with.”

“It was a good pie.”

It was indeed a very, very good pie. Even the indirect kiss wasn’t enough to compensate for the tragic loss of more than half of Sasha’s sweet potato pie that could have found a warm home in his stomach.

* * *

From the corner of his eye, Eren saw Levi walking into the office with a wide yawn. He also noticed he’d still been at work when Eren clocked off last night, immersed in a pile of documents with a scowl several fractions deeper than his usual frown.

Tapping at Armin’s arm to get his attention, he leaned in and whispered something. Armin’s eyes widened before he nodded and quickly left. Mikasa, who’d been talking with Annie over at the printer, saw Armin rushing out the doors and gave Eren a look that clearly said _what the fuck._ Eren responded with a look that said _I asked him to do something important and I just realised you have to do it too and Annie should do it as well_ but then he realised that they probably had no idea what his look meant so he told them about it in person.

And the rest of the staff as well.

As he started working through his emails, he’d forgotten all about it. Now all he could think about was trying not to crack open his skull instead of spelling out self-explanatory answers to hundreds of customer inquiries that honestly made him wonder why on Earth was he still working in the service industry. The arrogant, entitled tone of more than half these customer inquiries was enough to grit his teeth and bite his tongue with all the self-restraint he could muster whilst pushing the fine line between professionalism and passive aggressive email etiquette that would hopefully send another message to the persistent exploitative customers.

A takeaway cup of coffee slammed onto his desk and oh yeah, now he remembered his prank.

“Eren.”

Despite the light bags under his eyes, Levi was glowing.

“Hi Levi. Thanks for the coffee!”

“You’re fucking welcome. I have 20 of them on my desk.”

“Oh no, you’re that tired? You always work too hard, you should go home early today and get some rest or something.”

“I didn’t buy them.”

“No?”

“Don’t play dumb. Why the fuck did Armin, Mikasa, Annie and literally everyone in the office say that I asked them to get me a coffee?”

Eren took a sip. “Because they’d listen to me if they thought that you wanted it? Your tired face is scary.”

“I’ll make it scarier just for you, brat.”

“How kind of you.”

“Did you hear me? I have a fucking shitton of coffee while there are starving children in Africa. What am I even supposed to do with them?”

“Drink them?”

“If I do I’ll end up shitting enough to take a perfect colonoscopy by midday.”

“I dunno, you could always give it back to the people who gave it to you.”

“I- oh.”

“You really don’t look too good. And I don’t mean it in a bad way, you have a very nice face but you’re weirdly pale.”

“I’ve always been this pale.”

“Okay then you look like you might collapse. Don’t you think you can take a day off?”

“Listen, it’s that time of year where I have recruitment to do and onboarding contracts to prepare before our peak sales period arrives. I don’t have time to take a pathetic break.”

“I can screen applicants for you and you can just cross-check them when you get back. You can delegate the phone interviews to Hange, she loves experimenting- I mean, grilling people in interviews. I can also do the contract drafting or prepare the onboarding packs since I’m pretty ahead of schedule in my workload and could use a break from dealing with these customers.”

“You’re a customer service assistant, not a HR assistant.”

“Yeah you caught me, I wouldn’t be able to do any of that shit. Erwin can though. Or future Levi can. Come on, I know you still have annual leave.”

“And how would you know that?”

“Because-” _Because I notice every time you don’t come to work and it’s not the same without you here._ “I’m psychic.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Go home today.” Eren begged. “Please?”

When Levi finally sighed, slipping his papers back into his bag and preparing to head out the sliding doors, he tilted his head back at Eren.

Levi waved. “Screw you.”

“Anytime.”

The next day, another coffee somehow found its way to Eren’s desk. Looking up from the steaming beverage placed in front of him, he saw Levi quirk an eyebrow as if daring him to retort.

It was the best coffee he ever remembered drinking.

A sort of tradition or routine emerged where Levi would occasionally buy Eren a coffee and vice versa. If the weather was exceptionally permissible, they would go out to a coffee shop and shared their breaks. 

One rainy day, Eren decided to ask on a whim if Levi still wanted to head out somewhere to together and eat. Unsurprisingly, his offer was met with flat refusal. No way would Levi’s shoes get any more wet than they needed to be, especially after their rough treatment from his accidental step into mud. But after work they could go in his car instead to have dinner, Levi suggested. That way they could continue their conversation about hypothetical world apocalypses and stay sheltered from the downpour. 

The two ended up outstaying their welcome in the quaint restaurant, holding back laughter as they rushed into the car in the pitch-black night. Eren’s place was far so he found himself huddled in the couch of Levi’s living room, wrapped in a bit too many blankets after succumbing to Levi’s persistent claims that he’d get cold at night since he refused to sleep in a futon in his bedroom.

He fell asleep to the faint scent of Levi’s cologne.

* * *

For the love of all things holy, Eren was literally going to strangle Levi and feed his bloated corpse to the ibises.

This was the third time! The third bloody time this week that Levi had stolen his favourite pen that had a small crest of intersecting wings. The pen had been the only thing they scavenged out of his father’s basement after the fire but more importantly, it had the best ballpoint tip for smooth writing and Levi fucking knew it.

“God-fucking-damn it Levi!”

“Don’t shout, we’re at work. And you forgot to cover Armin’s ears.”

“Don’t patronise him,” he hissed, whipping his head to Mikasa who dutifully nodded and covered Armin’s ears.

“How can I help you?”

“Give me back what you stole.”

“Aw, did I steal your heart?”

“My pen you asswipe.”

“This?” Levi leisurely twirled said pen in his fingers. “I would, but you see, I don’t really want to.”

“You have like a dozen pens in your drawer.”

“And yet it’s this pen that makes you lose your shit. Has anyone ever told you that your hair fluffs up when you get mad? I don’t know how that works but it’s fascinating to watch.”

Levi grinned smugly, his chin resting on his palm, and Eren was absolutely ready to claw back, mentally rehearsing the line he would spit at Levi: _You wanna fight? Fuck you!_

Just as he opened his mouth, he noticed Levi’s cuffs were undone, his sleeves rolled up to his elbow, displaying a full expanse of porcelain skin. And in that split second, his brain malfunctioned.

Eren screamed, “YOU WANNA FUCK?”

_Oh god. Holy SHIT-_

“I’ve been waiting for you to ask, brat.” Levi inspected his nails, almost looking bored. “Just maybe not with a large crowd.”

“I wasn’t-!” A chorus of muffled giggles and snorts burst from the cubicles around them. “I meant to say ‘you wanna fight’! And fuck you!”

“So you don’t wanna fuck? Your loss.”

“Wait I didn’t say _that_ -”

“I’ll take that as consent then?”

Mikasa yelled from across the office, “Levi that’s not how consent works!”

“Let me have this Mikasa. Eren, do you want to sleep with me?”

“Not in front if the whole staff!”

“Who said it’ll be in front of the whole staff?”

“For fucks sake,” Eren knew that he was blushing to the tips of his ears and hated that the heat probably wouldn’t be disappearing anytime soon. Not with the audience to his embarrassment and the gleam of fond amusement in Levi’s eyes. “You’re impossible.”

“So is that a yes-”

“Eren. Levi.” A commanding voice interrupted them and Erwin appeared between the two, hands behind his back. “Outside of office hours please. And if it’s urgent, there’s always email.”

He glanced around the room and everyone else immediately feigned interest in their computers or papers, whatever would still allow them to have peripheral vision of the show. Clearing his throat, he gave a pointed look at Eren.

“Right, sorry.” Eren rushed back to seat, gripping his armrests until his knuckles turned white. “What the fuck just happened?”

Pen. Word slip. Fuck. Erwin. Email.

An random image of fucking Erwin spontaneously leaped into his mind and he tried to bleach the hell out of the unpleasant intrusive thought.

Email.

There was no way he would be able to wait until after work to get clarification or closure. Hastily, he typed up a brief email and sent it to Levi.

_If I read the signs right - and I swear to god if I’m wrong and you were just making fun please just fucking tell me - are you free to hang out Saturday night?_

One second passed. Then another. Oh god, the suspense was fucking killing him.

Panicked footsteps sounded from Levi’s desk towards Eren at an alarming rate and for some reason, a part of Eren’s mind thought _oh my gosh is he going to kiss me?_

“Eren delete the email.”

“Huh?”

“I am going to scream- delete it right now I’m not even joking it’s not too late he might not have seen it maybe you can just un-send it and it’ll be ok dear lord this is not good.”

“Levi what are you- _who_ might not have seen? Did you seriously come here to talk about yourself in third person?”

“Eren look at your email and tell me who you sent it to.”

“Here you can see it too, I just sent it to you and- _oh no_.”

“Yeah so you can see why you need to either un-send it right now or prepare to move permanently. Maybe Australia. Why the ever-loving fuck did you CC Erwin into that email?!”

“Don't say that out loud it might become true!"

"Eren you done fucked us both up now."

"Oh my lord it was an accident I'm so, so sorry Levi! Honestly I swear to god I think I might have done it as habit because I CC Erwin in all my emails and I wasn’t really thinking because I think the whole office knows I really, really like you and it’s a tad overwhelming.”

“Eren I really like you too but-”

_Ping!_

“IS THAT-”

“DID ERWIN JUST REPLY-”

“What the shit?! What did he say?!”

“It’s an attachment, I’m opening it now. It’s…”

“A warning for inappropriate use of company technology?”

“It’s a coupon for a love hotel.”

_“…”_

_“…”_

“I’m going back to finish my work so that there isn’t a single other thing that Erwin can blackmail me about.”

“Sorry Levi.”

“It’s alright. You should be.” He ruffled Eren’s hair. It was softer than he imagined.

He hadn’t even fully walked away before Eren’s inbox chimed with another _ping!_

It was from Levi.

_It’s a date._

**Author's Note:**

> Based off the prompt https://karucilla. tumblr.com/post/171394911843/otpprompts-imagine-your-otp-as-sworn-enemies-in
> 
> (I can't believe I wrote this in 3 hours instead of doing my assignment that's due in well fuck 3 hours)


End file.
